Date of Award

6-2017

Document Type

Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

George Bizer

Language

English

Keywords

narrative transportation, narrative persuasion

Abstract

Previous studies had explored that narrative transportation increases affectivity and decreases cognitive responses. Specifically in the context of advertisement narrative transportation was found to increase product and brand evaluation and therefore was considered as an effective promotional strategy for marketers. In the current study we examined the direct impacts of narrative advertisement on people's positive affectivity critical thinking ability and brand evaluation and how the impacts differed between females and males and also between people assigned to read ad of spontaneous product and deliberative product. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of four types of radio transcript: narrative spontaneous product ad narrative deliberative product ad fact-based spontaneous product ad and fact-based deliberative product ad and were then asked to complete questionnaires measuring their positive affect critical thinking ability and brand evaluation. Participants yielded significantly less critical thinking ability and higher brand evaluation when reading narrative ad regardless of product type and gender. The trend of the results illustrated a directions that only participants assigned to read spontaneous product ad yielded a a higher brand evaluation in narrative ad condition than in fact based ad condition meaning the effect of narrative transportation on brand evaluation might be intensified by spontaneous product. Moreover when viewing narrative ad females generated lower critical thinking ability than did males; however this pattern was not seen in fact-based ad condition. Therefore the gender difference on cognitive responses only appeared among people assigned to read narrative ad. Narrative transportation was therefore found as an effective strategy especially for advertising spontaneous products or products aimed at female consumers.

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